Where Does the Catalogue End and Your Assortment Begin

Browsing a wholesale catalogue and deciding what your shop will actually stock are two different activities. The catalogue lists what can be requested; your assortment is what you choose to stand behind for your own customers. This note sets out a simple stopping rule for when browsing should end, how to record the line between candidates and committed varieties, and where the enquiry step fits once the selection is fixed.

Catalogue breadth is not assortment

The catalogue is wide by design. Vegetable groups alone run from artichokes and asparagus through to tomatoes, and leaf vegetables form a mixed botanical group in which Beta, Brassica, Cichorium and Spinacia names each mark a different part of the range. None of that breadth tells you what belongs in your shop. The catalogue answers what can be requested; your assortment answers what your customers will be offered. Treat the catalogue as a source of candidates, not as a list to be worked through from top to bottom.

The stopping rule

Stop browsing once every candidate line has a reason to be there that is not the catalogue itself. A workable test is to name, for each line you keep, the customer group it serves and the place it would occupy on your shelf or in your seasonal planning. If a line survives only because it looked interesting on a catalogue page, it is still a candidate and has not earned a slot. When new browsing mainly produces variants of lines you already hold, the assortment is probably fixed enough to move on.

Record candidates and committed lines separately

Keep two lists rather than one. The candidate list can hold anything you noticed, with the catalogue reference and the reason it caught your eye. The committed list holds only lines you have decided to offer, with the requested quantity and the unit recorded for each. Moving a line from one list to the other should be a deliberate act, not an automatic step. This separation matters later, because only committed lines should go into an enquiry for quotation.

Keep botanical qualifiers intact

Cabbage, curly kale and other Brassica foliage selections share a genus but are not interchangeable, and a broad imported botanical label does not settle which reference you meant. Where a name is ambiguous, carry the leaf-type and cultivar qualifiers through into your committed list and ask for clarification against the SKU. The same caution applies to leaf vegetables, where chard, mustard greens, endive and spinach references sit in one group despite belonging to different botanical names.

Fix quantities and units on the committed list

Before browsing ends, each committed line should state the quantity you want and the unit that quantity is expressed in. A price per kilogram is a different basis from a price for a stated number of seeds, so record the unit the product entry uses rather than assuming. Pack size and available quantity are confirmed in the quotation, but the enquiry should still carry your intended volume, so the quotation can be checked against what you actually asked for.

Close the boundary before you enquire

Once the committed list is complete, the next step is an enquiry, not more browsing. Submitting an enquiry does not place an order and no payment is taken through the website; the selection is reviewed and a quotation is prepared. Because the enquiry records what you asked for at that moment, finishing the assortment decision first keeps the quotation comparable to your plan. Lines you are still unsure about can stay on the candidate list for a later enquiry rather than being included on the chance they work out.

What the quotation can and cannot confirm

The quotation is where availability, pack sizes, prices, applicable taxes, shipping charges and delivery arrangements are specified. Those points are not confirmed by adding items to the basket or by sending the form. Product descriptions and listed prices relate to catalogue entries and do not confirm current stock or batch-specific test results, so ask for the documentation you need for the proposed shipment. Read the enquiry terms before submitting so you know what the acknowledgement does and does not mean.

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